Four people found dead at Galamsey site

August 13, 2017140 Views

Lives have been lost at galamsey, Four persons have allegedly been murdered at a galamsey site in Akukuso, near Kwabeng in the Atiwa West District of the Eastern Region.

The bodies of the four were found Sunday morning in a pool of stagnant galamsey water at the site with marks of assault all over their bodies, eyewitnesses told 3News. “It appears they were beaten and strangled…one of them had his eye broken. The teeth of some of them were also broken,” Yaw Ofori an eyewitness who saw the bodies told 3News. The names of two of the four murdered persons have been given only as Dangyima and Alhaji.

Eyewitnesses say a small-scale miner who felt threatened by the military-cum-police Operation Vangauard, hired three of the deceased to remove his equipment from the site. The three, who operate a low bed truck that is used for transporting heavy-duty equipment, left Anyinam Saturday at about 9:00pm for the site at Akukuso together with the fourth person said to be working for the small-scale miner. The four persons, however, did not return. On Sunday morning, their colleagues moved to the site only to find the earth-moving equipment mounted on the low bed truck, which had its engine running but there was no one in sight.

A search of the area was conducted by the people who discovered the bodies of the four persons in a galamsey pit filled with water. Alarm was raised and the Kwabeng Police moved to the site to recover the bodies, which are being taken to the Kibi Government Hospital for autopsy. Meanwhile, the incident has angered some youth of Anyinam who blocked the town’s main road to traffic to demand the bodies of the four two of who are said to be Muslims and needed to be buried according to Islamic custom. It took the intervention of the MP for Atiwa West, who is also the Deputy Minister of Roads and Highways, Akwasi Amoako Atta to calm the youth to remove the roadblock. Notwithstanding the people want the bodies released to them immediately.